Ghostly Serenade Read online

  “We saw Aladdin last night, so that was fun. My husband and the kids were headed to the Empire State Building this morning, so I’m missing that, but we’ve got a lot of other fun things planned.” I continued to tell him about some of the things we wanted to do, and even a few we didn’t, just to keep him from thinking about me.

  Relieved to arrive at the hospital, I quit talking. Luckily, Hawk had tuned me out, so that was a plus. As expected, an officer stood outside the victim’s door. Hawk stopped at the nurse’s station to let them know we were there.

  “She’s in a coma,” the nurse said. “That means she’s not talking. It won’t do you any good to see her.”

  “Has there been any improvement?” Hawk asked.

  The nurse sighed, thinking that the patient had shown signs of lucidity yesterday; but, because of the swelling, the doctors had put her in a medically induced coma. Thankfully, the swelling had gone down, but getting shot in the head and surviving to live a normal life, would take a miracle. “She’s holding her own, and we’re doing our best.”

  She’d been shot in the head? My stomach twisted. Once again, my breakfast threatened to come up. This was horrible. But if she’d been lucid once, what did that mean? Maybe it wasn’t so bad.

  “Wait,” I said. “If she’s in a medically induced coma, could we bring her out of it long enough to ask a couple of questions? If she can tell us who did this to her, it will help us keep her safe.”

  The nurse’s eyes bulged. How did I know the coma was medically induced? “The coma is to slow down her brain function and reduce swelling in order to lessen brain damage. It’s the best chance she has for recovery, and waking her up now would be premature.”

  “But she did wake up once?”

  “Yes, she did, but we can’t take a chance on waking her up again. While she’s in a coma, she’s in a deep sleep, and she needs to stay that way to heal. Right now, only time will tell if she gets better, but we can’t bring her out of it just so you can ask questions.”

  “Okay,” Hawk said. “That’s fine.” He glanced at me wondering how he could explain why I needed to be in the room. He didn’t want to tell her I was psychic. “We’d still like to see her, but we promise not to disturb her.”

  She shrugged. “I don’t understand why. She can’t tell you anything.”

  “We just need a few minutes.”

  “Fine. You have five. That’s it.”

  Hawk barely glanced my way before ushering me toward the room. He opened the door, and I took a calming breath before stepping inside. We both hesitated to find another nurse standing beside the patient.

  The petite woman had shoulder length, white-blond hair that was braided on one side of her head, with the other side falling across her face. There were several piercings in her ears, and her pale skin made her dark blue eyes seem almost violet in color. She’d been holding Taylor’s hand in a comforting way, and my heart softened to see her compassion.

  She glanced at us with dark, raised brows. Hawk quickly explained that we were with the police, and she nodded. “Okay. I’ll be just another moment.”

  As she checked the monitors and IV line, I listened to her thoughts, hoping to get an idea of Taylor’s prognosis. I couldn’t hear a thing. I tried again, but came up empty. What the freak? Panic hit me hard. Had I lost my mind reading ability?

  I focused on Hawk and heard him loud and clear. Letting out a breath of relief, I turned back to the nurse. Still nothing. This had never happened to me before. Even when Ramos or Chris blocked their thoughts, I always picked up something, even if it was just a feeling. What was going on?

  She kept checking things, then took Taylor’s wrist between her fingers and looked at her watch. That struck me as strange, because the machine already showed Taylor’s pulse. Curious, I opened my mind to the woman on the bed.

  The dark hair on the side of her head had been shaved away, and a thick bandage covered the wound, held in place with a piece of gauze that wrapped around her head. With her pale face and small size, she looked young and vulnerable. I listened real hard and picked up an awareness that she knew the nurse was there, taking care of her.

  Wow. I hadn’t expected that. The other nurse had made it sound like she was totally unconscious. But she was still in there somewhere. That gave me hope. Maybe I could hear something.

  The nurse patted Taylor’s hand and whispered that she’d be right back. She turned to us. “I’m done for now. I’ll be just outside. Call if you need me.”

  “Okay. Thanks.” I smiled at her as she passed. She hesitated, narrowing her eyes for a moment before nodding and continuing out the door. What was that about?

  Shaking my head, I moved to Taylor’s side and tried to pick up her thoughts. I caught a hint of distress and loneliness, like she was all alone on a floating raft in a sea of darkness. Her distress began to mount, building into sheer terror, and I caught her fear that she was being attacked. She didn’t move, and absolutely nothing changed on her face, but I knew if she could scream, she’d be screaming her head off.

  Swallowing, I took her hand and gently rubbed my thumb across her skin. “You’re safe, Taylor. It’s okay now. No one’s trying to hurt you.”

  I kept murmuring words of comfort until I felt her fear slow and the nightmare recede. When she seemed calmer, I spoke again, telling her who I was. “Taylor, I’m Shelby Nichols. I’m with the police. You and your friends were all shot by someone in your apartment. Do you know why?” I listened for a few moments, then heard a name.

  Lee.

  My breath caught. “Lee? Who’s Lee? Is it a friend?” Nothing else came, so I decided to try again. “Taylor, we’re trying to find the person who did this to you. Is there anything you can tell me? Did you know him? Do you know why he shot you? Was it someone named Lee?”

  I listened real hard, but no words came. Instead, she started to get upset again. “You’re safe, Taylor. It’s okay. I’m just trying to help you.” It was no use. Just mentioning the incident sent her into a panic. None of it showed, but I felt it just the same. Soon, darkness crept in, and she got lost in the nightmare.

  “Your time’s up.” The head nurse bustled inside, pushing her way beside Taylor and making me move. In my concentration on Taylor, I hadn’t been aware of the loud beeping from the machine monitoring her blood pressure. The numbers were higher than they should be, and the nurse pursed her lips with disapproval. “I think you need to leave.”

  I glanced at the door, and the other nurse who’d been in the room caught my gaze. She motioned with her head toward the hallway, including Hawk in her gesture. We followed her out. After the door closed, she turned to us. “I’m sorry about Anne’s brusque behavior. We get quite protective of our patients.”

  I nodded, noticing her name on a tag. Since I couldn’t hear her thoughts, I hoped she might have some information we could use. “Hi Gabriella. I’m Shelby Nichols. I’m helping the police find the person who did this to Taylor and her friends.”

  “It’s Ella,” she responded. She nodded toward the door. “I saw you talking to her in there. Why did you do that?”

  “Oh… I thought she could hear me.” Our gazes met, and something about her made me want to tell her the truth. “After you left, she seemed lost. I was just trying to comfort her and see if she remembered anything that would help us with her case.”

  “But she can’t talk.”

  “I know… but sometimes I get impressions.”

  I didn’t elaborate, so she pinned Hawk with a skeptical stare.

  “She’s a psychic,” he said. “The chief wanted her help with this case.” He glanced at me. “Did you get anything?”

  They both stared at me expectantly. “Well, yeah, a name. Lee. Do you know anyone by that name? Could it be a family member or a boyfriend or something?”

  Ella shrugged. “I’m not sure, but I’ll keep an eye out in case someone with that name comes to visit her.”

  “Will you let us know?” I ask
ed. “I’d be real interested in talking to him.”

  Her left brow rose, and Hawk quickly fished out a business card. “Here’s my number.” During his visit with the family yesterday, he hadn’t met anyone with that name, but it didn’t hurt to look into it.

  She took the card and slipped it into her pocket. I didn’t know if she’d call or not, and it was starting to annoy the hell out of me. Why couldn’t I hear her?

  “We need to get going,” Hawk said. “Thanks for your help.”

  Ella chewed on her bottom lip. “I think she’s improving. You might want to come back tomorrow. If she’s awake, you can talk to her then.”

  “Oh. Okay. Thanks,” I said, surprised, since the other nurse had little hope of a full recovery.

  As we started down the hall, Hawk shook his head, thinking that whole episode was weird. The way I talked to the woman kind of creeped him out, like I was having a conversation with her. Who was this Lee person? Had I really picked that up, or was it just an act? It was like I’d heard her thoughts.

  He thought the nurse, Ella, was more helpful. She must have believed Taylor was improving, otherwise, she wouldn’t have told us to come back tomorrow. If Taylor woke up, that might be the break we needed to find the killer.

  We made it back to his car without speaking a word. After buckling up, he turned to me. “Are you going to tell me what that was all about?”

  “Do you know who this Lee person might be?” I asked instead.

  He let out a breath. “No. The name hasn’t come up anywhere. You think it’s connected? Is it the killer’s name?”

  “I don’t know, but it has to be important or I wouldn’t have picked it up. Maybe it’s a co-worker or something. We’ll have to keep digging.”

  He sighed. “You still want to go to the apartment?”

  “Yes, we might as well.”

  Hawk pulled onto the street and headed for the apartment. “So I’m curious,” Hawk said. “Have you always had premonitions?”

  “Uh… no. Just in the last year or so.”

  When I didn’t elaborate, he continued, “Mind if I ask how it started?”

  I did mind, but I might as well tell him, then maybe he’d quit asking me questions. “I was at the grocery store shopping for carrots.” I continued with my story, only substituting the mind-reading part with premonitions.

  “Hmm… is that why you got a little pale at the hospital? Because Taylor had been shot in the head?”

  “Yeah. It kind of hit close to home, although for me, the bullet just grazed my head.”

  “So how do your premonitions work exactly?” He’d read some of my explanation in the newspaper article about the shooting, but he wanted to hear the details I probably didn’t share with the paper.

  I hoped he was used to disappointment, because I wasn’t about to share anything different with him. “It’s like intuition, and maybe a feeling. Not a big deal.”

  “Uh-huh.” He wondered why I was snow-balling him. I was hiding something. What was it?

  Luckily, we arrived at the apartment building before he asked any more questions. We took the elevator to the third floor. The apartment still had crime scene tape across it. The broken door was held in place with a special police padlock. Hawk took out a set of keys and unlocked the contraption.

  “Usually we’d have cleared it by now, but the chief wanted it left undisturbed until you had a chance to take a look. Will that help your premonitions?”

  “Yeah, it should.”

  He glanced at me for an explanation. Since he wasn’t going to let it go, I’d just have to make something up on the fly and hope he bought it.

  “It helps me feel the latent energy of the crime. Sometimes I can get something from that energy which will give me a clue about the people involved.” Whoa. That sounded better than I expected.

  Hawk seemed to buy it, and he pushed the door open, ready for me to do my magic. The smell of dried blood hit me first, and I wished it had been cleaned up before I got there. The yellow, numbered tags, where the evidence had been found, were still in their places all over the floor.

  The couch had the most blood on it, along with a smaller patch on the carpet. “Taylor was the last one shot. It probably saved her life. She was shot there.” He pointed to the blood on the carpet. “The other two were there.” He was thinking that the gunman hadn’t made sure they were dead before he left. He must have run out of time, most likely because he’d only expected to find one person instead of three.

  Looking around the room, I nodded. “That makes sense. Now we just need to figure out which one of them was the target.”

  “What?” Hawk asked.

  I glanced his way with alarm. Oh no. Had I just answered his thoughts? “Uh… didn’t you say Taylor was the last one shot?” At his nod, I continued, “So it only follows that the killer must have left in a hurry, which means he may have only expected to find one person here instead of three, right? So if that’s the case, which one was he really after? If we knew that, we’d know which victim to concentrate on.”

  Hawk nodded, thinking that was weird. It was like I’d agreed with his thoughts, which made no sense. But, since we’d both had the same thoughts, maybe we were just on the same wavelength. Or he was a damn good detective, just as good as someone with premonitions.

  “I’m going to take a look around,” I said, needing to get away from him… or, more specifically, his thoughts. Ugh. That was close.

  The apartment was big for New York standards, with a small living and kitchen area divided by a couch set. A big-screen TV was mounted on the wall, with a bookshelf beside it. The small kitchen took up the other side of the room, with a kitchen island and three bar stools instead of a table and chairs.

  A short hallway led to three separate bedrooms, with one bathroom tucked into the corner, which they obviously had to share.

  The first room was neat and tidy, with nothing out of place. There were a few posters of building plans on the wall, so this had to be Taylor’s room, since she was a city planner. A small desk in the corner must have held a laptop, which wasn’t there anymore, probably taken by the police for evidence.

  The second room, across the hall beside the bathroom, was bigger and had more personal items. The clothes were more professional and expensive, so this was probably the loan officer’s room. She might be the one who got the apartment in the first place, and then asked her friends to move in. Of the three, she seemed better-off financially. She had room for a dresser, with lots of costume jewelry on top, and photos on the mirror.

  One of the photos was taken in a photo booth, and it showed the three women with big smiles on their faces. It was nice to see them smiling and happy, but it also sent a spike of sadness through my heart. I picked out Taylor first, but I wasn’t sure which of the others was which. Carrying the photo, I crossed the hall to enter the third room.

  It was messy, with clothes strewn on the bed and floor. A plastic shelf unit in the corner held books and playbills from Broadway shows, so this had to be Cammie’s room. From the amount of playbills, it looked like she’d lived there for a couple of years at least.

  I searched through her tiny closet and found a large box in the corner. Opening the lid revealed several photos of her in a couple of different costumes. She was a beautiful, young, African-American woman. Her dark skin glowed, and her large black eyes held a touch of sass that made me want to smile. She was just getting started in her career, and sorrow that she was dead washed over me.

  Placing the photos back in the box, I heard a woman’s voice. Startled, I glanced around the room, but I was alone. It came again, and I jumped a little. The voice sounded like it was right next to me, singing a song. The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end, and my breath hitched. I couldn’t make out the words at first, but the tune seemed familiar.

  I held completely still, and the tune grew in volume until I understood exactly what it was.

  Row, row, row your boat, gently do
wn the stream,

  Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a dream.

  The song repeated three times before stopping. Catching my breath, I glanced around the room. Could it have been a cell phone, and that was the ring-tone? With my heart pounding, I jumped up and rushed into the main living area. Hawk sat on a bar stool at the counter, waiting for me.

  Noticing my wide eyes and pale face, he straightened. “Are you all right?”

  I plopped onto a bar stool beside him and swallowed. “Uh… this is going to sound crazy, but did you hear anything out here? Like someone singing?”

  He shook his head, narrowing his gaze. “No. I haven’t heard a thing since we’ve been here.” In fact, he was just thinking how nice and quiet it was.

  Dang. It wasn’t a ring tone at all. Cammie was singing to me. I knew she’d given me a huge clue, but for some reason my mind wasn’t working. “Okay. Uh… let’s go over this once more and start with the names of the victims, along with their jobs.”

  Hawk shrugged, thinking that if I’d just read the report, I’d already know. “Sure. We’ve got Cammie Wainwright. She’s the singer. Then we have Taylor Price. She’s the city planner.”

  “Right—the one in the hospital. And the last?”

  “Merilee Ross, the loan officer.”

  A chill ran down my back. That was it. I met Hawk’s gaze. “It’s Merilee. She’s the one this is all about.”

  CHAPTER 4

  “How do you know that?” Hawk asked.

  “I’m a psychic, remember?”

  “I know… that’s not what I meant. What happened to give you that impression?”

  He wasn’t going to let it go, but I had no intention of telling him that I’d heard a voice singing a song with her name in it. That would just sound crazy, especially since the song was “Row, Row, Row your Boat.” “Just trust me on this.”

  He let out a breath, not sure he could do that. But he had to start somewhere. “Fine. So… are you getting anything else?”

  “Uh… no. I think that’s it, for now, at least.”